Regrets, I've Had a Few
by Ellie Biel
Summary: I had hoped there was more between us than this, Heero had told him on his way out. A failed relationship doesn't often get a second chance, but sometimes, just sometimes, one does. HeeroDuo, AU, implied yaoi.
1. To Cut Off One's Nose

Title: To Cut Off One's Nose  
Pairing: past 1+2  
Rating: PG  
Warning: angst(?)  
Word count: 795  
Challenge: flattery

* * *

Duo watched as the door to the apartment closed with a sense of finality.

He hadn't believed it would come to this. When had things gotten so complicated?

He sat on the couch numbly, staring at the door, as if he expected Heero to come walking back in at any minute, despite knowing that wasn't going to happen.

He'd made damn sure of that.

Duo sighed and leaned back against the couch. What had he expected? For Heero to forgive him, to accept evidence of infidelity with a shrug and a smile?

Sadly, that's exactly what he had assumed would happen.

He'd tried to argue with Heero, to explain that it wasn't really cheating unless penetration was involved.

Heero had accepted his explanation calmly, his face betraying none of the hurt he'd felt when he found Duo sitting on the couch with another man's hand in his crotch.

At least, Duo assumed he'd been hurt. He knew Heero better than anyone after all. He knew that Heero would never have agreed to sex if he didn't feel something more than physical attraction.

Duo knew he shouldn't have tested Heero. He'd been caught off guard with the groping, and would have planted his fist in his molester's face if Heero's presence hadn't caught them both by surprise before he could react.

His guest had made tracks, obviously much smarter than he'd led Duo to believe when he'd come looking for a tutor.

Duo had tried to be glib about the whole thing, and for his efforts to pass it off as a joke, Heero had turned his back on him and gone into the kitchen to prepare dinner.

If there was one thing Duo hated, it was being ignored. He thought he'd become accustomed to it, but not after Heero had shown him that his actions were very much taken into regard.

He wanted a reaction, and therefore fabricated a story worthy of gossip columnists everywhere.

Still Heero had not reacted, and that's when Duo had grabbed his arm and whirled him around, ready to yell in his face if that's what it took.

Instead, he kissed Heero, possessively, violently, to prove that Heero was his and that nobody owned Duo Maxwell.

Sex that evening had been harsh, angry, and full of emotion.

The next morning Duo had found the bed empty, and had felt the anger welling up again.

He taunted Heero when he made his way into the kitchen, unable to stop the words despite the part of him that begged him to reconsider.

It was as if he were no longer in control of his mouth, and in his desire to vent his frustration, he lashed out at the person who meant most to him in the world.

Still Heero didn't show any signs that he'd been affected by Duo's imaginary string of affairs.

Duo thought for sure that Heero hadn't believed him.

Then Heero finally responded with a direct question.

"Why are you telling me this?"

The answer was something Duo couldn't put into words. He wasn't quite sure himself.

He wished he could say he couldn't remember what he said, but every cold, biting word he'd thrown at Heero, every insult, every past transgression, came out in a flurry of shouts and angry gestures.

Then he'd thrown down the gauntlet, and told Heero if he didn't like it, that he could get the hell out.

It was Duo's apartment, after all.

And Heero had left.

Before he'd closed his suitcase, he'd looked at Duo, who had been railing at him the entire time he'd packed. In that moment of direct eye contact, Heero said quietly, "I had hoped there was more between us than this."

Whether he meant more than sex, or more than arguments and insults, or more than whatever their relationship had degraded into, Duo didn't know, nor did he care, so caught up was he in being the one who was right.

He was the injured party, not Heero.

"Don't flatter yourself," he said derisively.

Heero snapped the latches on his suitcase closed, picked it up, and walked past Duo.

Duo followed him as far as the living room, but instead of heading Heero off at the door, he sat in the couch, putting his feet up on the coffee table, knowing that it irritated Heero when he did so while still wearing his shoes.

He didn't turn his head toward the door until he heard it close.

He feared that Heero had believed every hurtful thing he'd said. There was no better way to compliment a con artist than to fall for his double talk.

He'd thought Heero was smarter than that.

Don't flatter yourself, Heero, he'd said.

What he should have said was, don't flatter me.


	2. Yellow

Title: Yellow  
Pairing: past 1+2  
Rating: PG  
Warning: angst  
Word count: 1,035  
Challenge: expectations

* * *

It hit him, at unexpected times, the loneliness.

Man was a social creature by nature, and Duo had spent many years surrounded by people. He'd worked with them, played with them, talked with them.

Slept with them.

After Heero had left, Duo had felt insignificant, tiny, even, in the small apartment. It wasn't as if Heero had taken much with him, because he'd had little of his own when he'd moved in with Duo.

Duo had gone to the closet and spread his clothes out. Now they wouldn't get wrinkled from being shoved to one side to make room for Heero's wardrobe.

It was the little things that got to him.

The first thing that struck him was the fact that nothing was in pairs in the bathroom anymore. There was only one toothbrush, one razor. Getting out of the shower and hanging his towel on the rod, he noticed there wasn't one already there. He didn't need to slide it over to make room for his.

Meals were quiet affairs. Duo found himself turning on the radio in the kitchen and the television in the living room, but still he felt the silence. It seeped into his skin and echoed in his brain.

He refused to let it get to him. He ate proper meals - more so now than he ever had when Heero had been there to provide silent censure regarding his idea of proper nutrition.

When he couldn't sleep at night, he cleaned. He would not allow the apartment to become a shrine to self-indulgent escapism.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks gave way to months.

It had been three months since Heero had left when Duo tired of sleeping alone, and invited a girl he'd met at the gym to his apartment.

He'd let her initiate sex. She'd dropped enough hints, and little time was spent with social niceties before his hands were under her shirt and his thigh pressed between her legs, rubbing her crotch suggestively as her painted lips left tiny bronze prints from his jaw to his neck.

She'd ridden him hard and fast, and rolled off him, her hair sticking every which way, her lipstick smudged, and her breasts heaving. She spooned her body next to his, her hand splayed on his chest. Her fingers played with his chest hair as she murmured how good it had been.

Duo took his cue and put an arm around her, drawing her close and making a noncommittal sound.

She spent the entire night in his bed, her body draped over his.

Duo did not sleep with her.

In the morning, he was glad to see her backside as she turned and walked out the door. He collapsed on the couch, face first, his arm dangling off the side. He stared at the television, but had no desire to reach for the remote control.

Several hours later, his eyes fluttered open, and he pushed himself off the sofa, wiping drool off his cheek and heading to the bathroom to shower.

He took his key and checked his mail, noting a copy of a new lease agreement had been included. He quickly scanned it, noting the slight increase in rent, and flipped the page.

Nothing was new, but his hand hesitated slightly as he poised the pen next to the first X at the end of the agreement.

There would be no second signature.

Technically Heero had never been a tenant. Duo hadn't bothered to inform the rental property that he'd taken on a roommate, as the lease had specified, but it had never been a problem.

Duo scrawled his signature hastily and folded it back up. It would later go into an envelope with his rent check, requiring extra postage, most likely.

He opened the drawer in the kitchen where the stamps were kept and realized there weren't any. That was odd. Heero usually-

Duo slammed the drawer shut, and scribbled "stamps" on the magnetic pad that was on the refrigerator. It was big and yellow and shaped like a banana, with SHOPPING LIST in big block letters across the top.

No one would have expected that item to have made an appearance in the kitchen thanks to Heero Yuy, who shrugged off Duo's questioning look with a simple, "it was on sale."

Duo pulled the pad of paper off the refrigerator door and dumped it into the garbage. Later, when he added broken eggshells and the used coffee filter to the mix, it was mere coincidence that the bright yellow pad was no longer visible whenever the lid was raised.

* * *

He ran into Heero a few weeks later. At the supermarket, of all places.

A glance at Heero's cart showed remarkably similar items. Duo's eyes flicked back into his own. When had he started eating dark green leaf lettuce? He'd always preferred iceberg.

Heero looked well. An errant child, no older than three or four, ran by him and collided with one of the produce shelves. Heero reached out a hand to steady the urchin, whose mother apologized profusely. Heero shook his head and gestured as if to indicate no harm was done.

He smiled at her.

Duo couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Heero smile.

What had Duo expected? To find Heero with dark circles under his eyes, rumpled and unkempt?

It would have hurt less if Heero hadn't been there alone. It would have hurt less to know that Heero had found someone else who had been responsible for his good humor and easy smile.

It would have been a lot easier if Heero hadn't wished him well and meant it.

Duo watched Heero push his cart down the aisle containing salad dressing and mayonnaise. He reached into his cart and removed the leafy green lettuce, carefully set it back where he'd gotten it from, and started to leave the produce section.

As he passed the last display, he slowed his pace, picked up the bunch of fruit closest to him, and deposited it in his cart before moving on.

If he noticed, when he got home, that the bright yellow fruit brightened the kitchen just a bit, he wasn't about to admit it.


	3. Belgian Waffles

Title: Belgian Waffles  
Pairing: implied 2xOC, past 1x2  
Rating: PG13  
Warning: angst  
Word count: 699  
Challenge: walk away

* * *

Duo picked up another application, this one just as riddled with spelling errors as the last and filled with enough holes in the employment history to rival Swiss cheese. He didn't think it was terribly unreasonable to expect a certain level of professionalism from potential employees, but he supposed that for a job like this, he was going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

He got to the next application and glanced at the handwriting, and he froze. He didn't need to look at the top of the page to see the applicant's name.

It had been a year since he'd last seen Heero and longer since that day when Heero had caught him in a compromising situation with another man. Instead of trying to defuse the situation, Duo had built it up, intending to provoke a reaction out of Heero.

He had, but not the one he'd been looking for.

Their relationship had been doomed from the start. Relationships forged under extreme circumstances didn't hold up very well after the excitement and danger were no longer part of every day living, and what had been left wasn't strong enough to keep them together.

"I had hoped there was more between us than this," Heero had said the day he left.

With the passage of time, Duo had a hard time remembering what "this" had been, but it didn't make seeing Heero's familiar handwriting, neat and almost feminine, bring back feelings he thought he'd long buried.

"Hey, Duo."

He looked up then. Standing in the doorway was his latest conquest, a girl that he'd hired simply because she was good in bed and never expected to spend the night. She was dressed in the polyester vest and skirt that went with the uniform, but her blouse was unbuttoned almost to the point of indecency. It wasn't the first time she'd done that, but he'd never heard a word of complaint about her mode of dress and he supposed part of him liked what she had on display.

"What's up?"

She walked to his desk and leaned forward until Duo's eyes couldn't help but be drawn to her cleavage.

"The front's all locked up." Between full cherry red lips, her tongue ran over bright white teeth.

He picked up Heero's application and ran it through the shredder.

* * *

Duo was glad he had the next day off, because he was hungover and hurting in places he didn't know existed. She wasn't just enthusiastic in bed, she was adventurous, almost kinky. She'd been hinting about role playing next time and although Duo wasn't sure he was comfortable with it, he was equally sure that he'd go along with it.

Pretending to be someone else would probably be the most honest thing he'd done in bed since that day.

He rolled out of bed at noon and rubbed at the stubble on his chin. A trip to the kitchen confirmed that the milk had gone sour, that there were no eggs, left, and that he was fresh out of coffee.

"Fuck it." He pulled a hat over his head and picked up his keys. There was a diner a couple miles down the road, and he had a sudden craving for their Belgian waffles.

* * *

The waitress was almost too cheerful but she poured him a cup of coffee before handing him the menu and then wandered off to refill other customers' cups. To Duo, that was good service. Coffee first, questions later. A man couldn't always be expected to carry on a decent conversation before he'd had his morning caffeine.

When she returned to take his order, he flirted with her briefly, just enough to make her laugh, and handed her the menu without opening it up.

He regretted that later.

It shouldn't have surprised him. It was a common enough practice but it was enough to make him cover his mouth as his stomach churned. He left the money and a generous tip next to his untouched breakfast.

All it had taken to send him running home was two pats of butter and a slice of bacon curved into a smile.

The same way Heero used to make them.


	4. Frozen

It was too cold out and the rain from the night before had probably frozen, leaving a sheet of black ice on the roads, but Duo didn't care. The holidays had hit him harder than he'd expected and he pulled his bicycle out of the shed almost savagely, knocking over a rake and a spade. He kicked them out of the way but didn't pick them up. 

He enjoyed the ache in his lungs from drawing deep breaths of cold air, followed by puffs of white each time he exhaled. He pushed himself to go up the hill, legs protesting all the way.

Up the hill, past the school, and around the bend.

The park should have been deserted. It was early; the sun had barely broken through the cover of clouds overhead, and Duo resented those who had the same idea, most of them joggers, some with dogs, some of them showing how much they worked up a sweat by coming out in a sweatshirt and shorts.

"Hope you fall on your ass," he muttered as one of them ran by.

He got off his bike and began walking, wheeling the bike alongside him. It was just a little further to the tree.

It had been a stupid thing to do, carving their initials into the tree, but they'd done it anyway. Heero had been the one who brought it up first. He'd run his fingers over the bark and said it seemed like the type of tree young sweethearts would put their mark on, and they'd both laughed and ridiculed the notion.

The next time they were at the park Duo had thought about what Heero had said and he'd found himself looking at the tree and pressing his fingers against the bark. He was sure they'd get wood chips in their eyes if they tried it and he'd mentioned it almost too casually to Heero, who had nodded.

It was their third time there when Heero had shown Duo the teak colored handle. The blade was short but sharp and when the coast was clear, Heero placed the tip against the bark. "Sometimes a little pain is necessary," he said, "but if we believe the reward is great enough, we'll hardly notice."

Duo had placed his hand over Heero's and together they carved their initials, interlocked and crudely drawn.

After that day, each time they'd come to the park and walked past the tree they'd shared a smile with each other, and if no one was around one of them would sneak around the side to see if they were still there. Duo pushed his bike faster when he approached the tree, but he found his steps slowing before he could get too far past it, and finally he gave up and turned around, propping the bike up against the tree and going around the other side.

They were still there, frozen under a sheet of ice and invisible if you weren't looking for them, but still there.

It gave Duo a lot to think about on the ride home.


	5. Ante Up

It was true, what they said, about time healing all wounds, because it did get easier. That wasn't to say that there weren't still times when he'd find himself listening for the sound of the shower when he first blinked open his eyes in the morning or smiling wistfully when a certain song came on the radio, but he'd made his choice and it wouldn't be fair to either of them if he spent too much time dwelling on past mistakes. Learn from them, move on, and find happiness in life's simple pleasures - that was a good motto to live by and it had served him as well as could be expected.

Heero had known that the day he'd run into Duo at the supermarket, because although his heart had skipped a beat, he'd found himself thinking of the good times they'd shared rather than the bitterness of the last time they were together. It had been a moment of epiphany for him, that he'd gotten to that point without even noticing, and he'd gone back to an aisle he'd visited previously just to pick out the makings of one of Duo's favorite suppers. He'd prepared and eaten it that night, alone, just to prove to himself that he could.

He'd been feeling restless lately, though, dissatisfied with his job, and had thought of finding a second one, part time or on weekends, just to meet and mingle with other people. The main flaw in that plan was that the places that offered shifts that fit his schedule tended to be staffed by teenagers, most of them still in high school, and he'd decided that he'd have much better luck visiting a pub during one of the big games where he'd find people closer to his own age.

He'd tried that once and decided that rowdy groups of heavy drinkers did more to interfere with his enjoyment of the game than enhance it, and he'd found instead that playing online poker and chatting with strangers on the internet provided a welcome distraction, one he could walk away from and pick back up whenever he felt like it.

The last thing he'd expected was to run into Duo there.

The screen name was unmistakably Duo's, but it was the joking tone he used when he'd win a hand and the habit he had of making the most innocent comments seem like innuendo, while completely ignoring the more obvious ones, that really convinced Heero, and he'd taken it upon himself to send a private message outside of the tournament. It was only fair that Duo know he was there. That was the one and only time they'd communicated.

Until now.

Heero told himself it was a bad idea. He'd come this far, and to meet Duo again, deliberately, to talk things over, could only end in angry words and hurt feelings. He wanted the best for Duo, but he wanted the same for himself, and he wasn't sure that this meeting would benefit either one of them. He looked at the message again and sighed. There was no question about it, he was going to cave. Duo had always known how to get Heero to do what he wanted, but he'd always saved it for when something was important to him.

He tried to glower at the screen, but his eyes fell unerringly to the one thing guaranteed to make him throw caution to the wind and agree. Heero really hoped he wasn't going to be sorry.

_I'd like to see you. There's a lot of things we need to talk about, to clear the air. Please say yes, Heero._


End file.
